1. It's a good start for what could be considered to be a chicken-and-egg problem.
2. It tells any local would-be renewable energy company that chooses to step in that there is local demand for your product.

hackingbear writes: Chinese scientists may have found the key to creating effective vaccines for the world’s deadly viruses including bird flu, SARS, Ebola, and HIV. An experiment by a research team at Beijing University was hailed as “revolutionary” in the field in a paper published in the latest issue of Science magazine on Friday. The live virus used in the vaccine used by the researchers had its genetic code tweaked to disable the viral strains’ self-replication mechanism. But it was kept fully infectious to allow the host animal cells to generate immunity. Using live viruses in their fully infectious form was considered taboo, as viruses spread rapidly. Vaccines sold and used widely today generally contain either dead or weakened forms of viruses. The animals infected with virus were cured after receiving the injection, according to the paper. This breakthrough promises to simplify the process of producing vaccines, which may help scientists develop effective vaccines or even cures for various viruses – such bird flu, SARS, Ebola and HIV – within weeks of an outbreak.

An anonymous reader writes: An unmanned cargo rocket bound for the International Space Station was destroyed after takeoff on Thursday. The Russian rocket took off as planned from Baikonur, Kazahkstan, on Thursday morning but stopped transmitting data about six minutes into its flight, as NPR's Rae Ellen Bichell reported: "'Russian officials say the spacecraft failed... when it was about 100 miles above a remote part of Siberia. The ship was carrying more than 2 1/2 tons of supplies — including food, fuel and clothes. Most of that very likely burned up as the unmanned spacecraft fell back toward Earth. NASA says the six crew members on board the International Space station, including two Americans, are well stocked for now.'" This is the fourth botched launch of an unmanned Russian rocket in the past two years.

An anonymous reader writes: Sometime before midnight Monday (UK local time) a ship dropped its anchor and broke, not one, not two, but three undersea cables serving the island of Jersey in the English Channel. Jersey is part of the Channel Islands along with Guernsey and some smaller islands. These things happen and that’s not a good thing. The cut was reported on the venerable BBC news website. For the telecom operators in Jersey (JT Global) this wasn’t good news. However looking at the traffic from Cloudflare’s point of view; we can see that while the cable cut removed the direct path from London to Jersey, it was replaced by the backup path from Paris to Jersey. The move was 100% under the control of the BGP routing protocol. It's a relief that there's a fallback for when these unpredictable events happen.

An anonymous reader writes: Engineers in San Francisco have tunneled underground to try and understand the sinking of the 58-story Millennium Tower. Now comes an analysis from space. The European Space Agency has released detailed data from satellite imagery that shows the skyscraper in San Francisco's financial district is continuing to sink at a steady rate — and perhaps faster than previously known. The luxury high-rise that opened its doors in 2009 has been dubbed the Leaning Tower of San Francisco. It has sunk about 16 inches into landfill and is tilting several inches to the northwest. Engineers have estimated the building is sinking at a rate of about 1-inch per year. The Sentinel-1 twin satellites show almost double that rate based on data collected from April 2015 to September 2016. The satellite data shows the Millennium Tower sunk 40 to 45 millimeters — or 1.6 to 1.8 inches — over a recent one-year period and almost double that amount — 70 to 75 mm (2.6 to 2.9 inches) — over its 17-month observation period, said Petar Marinkovic, founder and chief scientist of PPO Labs which analyzed the satellite's radar imagery for the ESA along with Norway-based research institute Norut. The Sentinel-1 study is not focused on the Millennium Tower but is part of a larger mission by the European Space Agency tracking urban ground movement around the world, and particularly subsidence "hotspots" in Europe, said Pierre Potin, Sentinel-1 mission manager for the ESA. The ESA decided to conduct regular observations of the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Hayward Fault, since it is prone to tectonic movement and earthquakes, said Potin, who is based in Italy. Data from the satellite, which is orbiting about 400 miles (700 kilometers) from the earth's surface, was recorded every 24 days. The building's developer, Millennium Partners, insists the building is safe for occupancy and could withstand an earthquake.

giulioprisco writes: Caltech researchers have achieved a spectacular demonstration that living organisms can be persuaded to make silicon-carbon bonds. The study is the first to show that nature can adapt to incorporate silicon into carbon-based molecules, the building blocks of life. This breakthrough could have en important impact on how medicines and other chemicals are made in the future, and open new horizons to synthetic biology.

Gunstick writes: Npr inteviewed the owner of a fake news company called Disinfomedia. They produce fake news to highlight the extremism of the white nationalist alt-right: "The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction," also interesting: "writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait." there's somewhere around 25 domains that are currently managed by Disinfomedia.

This question was discussed on Hackaday about a month ago. The criteria for the solution being high-end laptop with Linux capabilty. The conclusion was Lenovo Thinkpad models X, T and P.
Here's the link: http://hackaday.com/?s=thinkpa...

tedlistens writes: Sex toy and porn startups are legal but plagued by restrictions that range from municipal zoning laws to financial discrimination by banks of all sizes. Even the new wave of financial tech startups like Paypal and Square prohibit adult businesses from using their products, both explicitly and in tacit ways.

While financial institutions cannot systematically deny loans and other services based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, or familial status, no federal laws explicitly prohibit discrimination against adult businesses. In practice, say critics, this allows for occupational discrimination against adult-industry workers. In a time of constrained investment across the board, financial discrimination might be most hurtful to small, pioneering ventures--the kind seeking to upend the taboo around sex and porn and promote sexual health and awareness. "The people that these policies hurt most are the small guy or probably more accurately the small woman," says PJ Rey, a sociology doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland studying digitally mediated sex work. "It is the startup companies that are doing the more progressive stuff, and they are going to be affected more than the really big porn giants."

Yeah, you wouldn't need to change much environmentally if you had a rapid rise in elevation and used a piped pelton wheel. You could also use a simple archimedes screw to raise the water because it doesn't rely on suction so it can rise the water to any elevation. Also when you are done 'charging' you just lock it and when you want to charge again you just pick up where you left off.

rMortyH writes: Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language and co-developer of the Unix operating system passed away on October 8 at the age of 70, leaving a legacy that casts a very long shadow.